Many people carry it, but it doesn’t make you sick and could actually fight against viruses like HIV and Ebola

A virus called GB Virus-C has, apparently, infected more than a billion people alive today. But, fortunately, the cost of being infected with this virus is so low that researchers don’t think it causes any illness. In fact, it might stave them off, reports NPR's Richard Harris.

GBV-C infects white blood cells and dampens the body’s immune response. "It's not severe — it's not enough that it makes people immune-suppressed," Jack Stapleton, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Iowa, told NPR, "but it does reduce the inflammatory response of immune cells." The virus can be transmitted sexually, through blood and from an infected mother.

All this resembles HIV, and, in fact, people infected with HIV are also likely to have GBV-C. But that might be a good thing. Some studies have shown that GBV-C slows the progression of HIV infection.

Researchers don’t know exactly how GBV-C could do that, but they suspect that the virus reduces inflammation and thus staves off AIDS. If that’s the mechanism, it might also work in other viral diseases — say, Ebola. Though the number of new cases this month in the worst-affected countries was the lowest since late June, the Red Cross says the virus is appearing in new regions and that West Africa may not be rid of it this year.

Harris reports:

Hypothetically, this virus might also reduce inflammation in some people fighting off a roaring Ebola infection. "It's something you would predict," Stapleton says. "Although often what you predict doesn't happen, so I wouldn't have predicted it." But if that's the case, perhaps drugs that act in a similar manner would help as well.

It may be that the co-infection slowed Ebola’s progression, just as it does HIV’s, and gave the people a chance to fight off the deadly virus. But larger numbers would be needed to state that with any certainty. Still, while O’Connor is cautious about these results, he could see a future where it might be worth testing deliberate infection with GBV-C. "The thinking is," he told NPR, "this infects hundreds of millions of people around the world today; we knowingly transmit it in blood transfusions. It's essentially a safe virus."

We think. Another study has found that the virus might be more common in people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, raising the possibility that GBV-C could be connected with some negative health effects. Again, that association isn’t strong enough to say much for sure. But it is worth seeing if GBV-C is as good as it seems.

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About Marissa Fessenden

Marissa Fessenden is a freelance science writer and artist who appreciates small things and wide open spaces.